Chrysalis
by yamikinoko
Summary: .Kaoru. For the one who is left behind.


**A/N**: _Hooray for plotbunnies. Funnily enough, they usually annoy me by waking me up in the middle of the night, but it actually helped this time. Sort of. I've never really placed much emphasis on Kaoru, so I suppose you could call this a "first" of sorts._

**Disclaimer**: _I do not own **Ouran High School Host Club** or there'd be a heck of a lot of molestation reports in the police databanks._

------

**Chrysalis**

When trees begin to don their _kimonos_ of pink and white, when sidewalks begin to be carpeted by a thin layer of delicate cherry flakes, when there is a brief reprieve from the rustle of school life, Haruhi Fujioka makes her visit to the Shinsoku Daycare, ready to spend her day with tiny hands and innocent smiles.

Here, amongst the multi-colored, diminutive furniture and miniature handprints peppering the wall, through the flurry of "Me next, me next!" and "Snack time, everybody go wash your hands", Haruhi was merely known as "_onee-chan_". This, she finds, suited her just fine. Here, she was merely an older sister there to help, to talk with, to play House with.

Every year, when many her age enjoyed their week of freedom in the shopping plazas or at amusement parks, Haruhi would make her way down the street of her suburban neighborhood, down to the corner where clusters of children crowded at the gate, already anticipating the arrival of their _onee-chan_. This year however, _onee-chan_ was accompanied by two new people, people they had never seen before.

-----

"'Ey, Haruhi, do you really come here every year?" Hikaru asked, barely able to make himself heard over the clamor that had erupted when the children caught sight of Haruhi, "We still have four days left in spring break. We could go to Okinawa in that time."

"Hikaru, I told you already. They expect me here," Haruhi replied blandly as she entered the gate, "Besides, you're the one who decided to tag along."

"No, that was Kaoru's idea," Hikaru complained, but his brother merely laughed,

"We go to Okinawa almost every other year, Hikaru. It wouldn't hurt to try something new this time."

Hikaru opened his mouth to retort but was interrupted before he even began,

"_Onee-chan's_ here, _Onee-chan's _here!" a little girl with bobby pigtails screamed as she ran to embrace Haruhi, or, in reality, one of Haruhi's knees. Others soon followed, a little boy with messy black hair, another girl with panda clips in her short hair.

"It's a pretty small daycare," Kaoru commented upon further observation as Hikaru gaped at the flurry of activity, "There're only… six kids in all."

A particularly small girl clutching a worn teddy bear looked up at them both with large, chocolate-brown eyes and Kaoru, having noticed first, stared back.

"Who are you?" she asked finally with a child's typical innocence.

Hikaru seemed at a loss for words, so Kaoru bent down to her level, smiling in what he hoped was an encouraging fashion, "I'm Kaoru," he pointed back at Hikaru, towering above them both, "And that's my brother, Hikaru. What's your name?"

"I'm Chiyako," she replied dutifully, then launched into her next question, "Why are you here with _Onee-chan_?"

"We came to see _Onee-chan_ this morning and she told us she was coming here to see you, so we just followed her," Kaoru nudged Hikaru in the kneecap and winked up at him, "Isn't that right, Big Brother?"

"Umm… yea…" Hikaru muttered in acquiescence, a little out of his depth. The boy with messy hair ran up to him, and at second glance, he looked like the smaller version of an animated Mori-_senpai_,

"_Onii-san_, we're going out to the playground. Do you want to play on the swings with me?" And without waiting for an answer, the tiny Mori look-alike took Hikaru's hand and towed him towards the backyard. Kaoru grinned, watching Hikaru stumble through the living room and out the back door, trying in vain to keep up with the infinitely shorter and perhaps more energetic preschooler.

A small hand slipped into his and he looked down to see Chiyako regarding him calmly, "Let's go outside and sit in the shade, okay?"

-----

"Sitting in the shade" consisted of staking their claim on a park bench underneath a _sakura_ tree a couple of yards away from the playground as Chiyako watched her friends in the daycare play. Chiyako was a people-watcher. And since she had marked her obvious claim on him, he watched as well.

Hikaru might have been a little uptight at first, but it was obvious he felt better among his tiny associates not soon after a couple handfuls of sand were poured down his shirt. It was almost comical, finally seeing him act like the child he really was. To anyone who didn't know him as well as Kaoru did (not very many people at all), it would seem that he was only releasing his inhibitions in order for the kids to be comfortable around him, but in reality, Hikaru was just being himself.

Hikaru was often like a child, both in actions and thinking. Kaoru couldn't blame him. They grew up together, in their own little "world", as they liked to call it, and never really let anyone in, not even their parents. Their universe consisted of "Us" and "Them". There was no chance for outside interference, no influence from the "Them World" to help them change or mature in any way. And though Kaoru was the younger child, he had always possessed a protective attitude towards his impulsive, easily-hurt twin.

Kaoru was more introverted, more observant than his other half and though he retained VIP rights to the "Us World", his perceptivity provided him a link to the Them that, for all his vitality and eagerness for practical jokes, Hikaru didn't possess. And so with Hikaru's child-like mentality, Kaoru always felt the need to safeguard the fledgling emotions that had begun to develop as a result of their entrance into the Host Club. Life wasn't just about Us anymore. There were Them at the door to their world, knocking for entrance. _Kaoru always felt the need to safeguard those fledgling emotions._

-----

"Will I see you tomorrow?" Chiyako asked him as her mother came to pick her up. He had spent the entire day with her, "sitting in the shade" and just watching everybody else, especially Hikaru. And Haruhi. Don't forget Haruhi. It was just giving him time to stop and think, a pastime he had yet to reacquaint himself with.

He grinned, "Sure, I'll come. See you tomorrow."

"Kaoru, all you did was sit in on the bench with Chiyako," Haruhi commented as they walked her back to the apartment complex, "It's nice that you're spending time with her, but weren't you bored?"

"I bet he just didn't want to get sand in his pants," Hikaru snickered, injecting his own professional opinion.

Haruhi grinned wryly, "I think I could do without that myself. I think I have a desert in my shoes."

Kaoru merely smiled, sharing the silent joke with himself and listened to their easy bantering. Time was, Hikaru would have found it hard to converse so freely with one of Them. There was progress being made.

-----

"Look! It's a huge butterfly!" Pigtail-Girl screamed as she jumped up in the sandbox, trying to reach the merrily flitting insect as it passed by overhead.

The Mori-look-alike clapped at it, no doubt trying to catch it (though he looked like he was swatting at a mosquito), to no avail. What had been the construction of sand mountains now became a chase across the field for the butterfly which, as Kaoru noted with amusement, Hikaru also joined in with enthusiasm. Today, his twin had no problem getting back with the children to play with them, which was probably tribute to their own eagerness to see him.

"If they sat still, the butterfly would probably land on them," Chiyako murmured beside him, and sure enough, as Hikaru stopped to wait for Haruhi, the colorful speck had doubled around and, to the amazement of its pursuers, proceeded to land upon Hikaru's burnished red hair.

"Wow, _onii-san_, you're so lucky!" they exclaimed to his blushing embarrassment. From what Kaoru could tell from where he sat, it was from something Haruhi had commented upon and not their adoring praise as they drew closer for a better look.

"I guess you're right," he commented off-handedly to Chiyako, who merely nodded in response.

-----

At school, they were either known as the Hitachiin twins (which is really what they were) or people referred to them as "Hikaru and Kaoru". You never really heard "Kaoru and Hikaru", it was always "Hikaru and Kaoru", with emphasis on who was named first. It probably also had to do with the fact that he was the younger one, and Hikaru the older.

He supposed being the younger brother meant that he had to be deferent to his older sibling, for all that he always felt older than Hikaru. It was just something little brothers did, giving their big brother the first chance to try a new toy, or the first chance to make the introductions. So that's what he always did.

Even after they grew up together, through elementary school, then middle school, and finally now, their first year of high school, he continued to make sure that Hikaru would have what Hikaru wanted before he even thought about what Kaoru wanted because without fail, Kaoru always came after Hikaru. He would never help himself to what Hikaru wanted, because things just worked out that way. Kaoru was the little brother. _Kaoru always came after Hikaru. _

-----

"_Onee-chan_, _Onee-chan_, look what I found!" Panda-Clips squealed excitedly, holding something clasped tightly in her petite hands.

"What is it?" Haruhi asked, bending down to see as the other daycare attendees crowded around as well. In her outstretched palm lay the dried-out husk of a butterfly chrysalis.

"Is it a bug?" the mini-Mori asked in a reverent whisper.

"Eww!!" Pigtail-Girl exclaimed, backing away hurriedly, but walked back as if fascinated horror drove her to take another look.

"It's a chrysalis," Haruhi announced, picking it up carefully.

"A kirs- krissa- what?"

"A chrysalis," Haruhi repeated, "It's where a caterpillar stays and sleeps before it's ready to become a butterfly. This might be the old home of the butterfly you saw yesterday."

"So the chry-chrysalis is the butterfly's home?" Panda-Clips asked curiously.

Haruhi nodded, "That's right. The chrysalis protects the new butterfly until it's ready to leave."

"May I have it?" Chiyako asked quietly. She had come over without anybody noticing and consequently, they all turned to stare at her before Haruhi caught herself, "Um… Well, I don't think Mimi wants it," Panda-Clips shook her head, "Then sure, here you go."

Chiyako took it, "Thank you," and holding it carefully went contentedly back to her spot underneath the tree.

The brief silence following was quickly broken as the mini-Mori yelled, "Let's go look for butterflies!" This only led to more shouts of acclamation and a mass stampede onto the field.

-----

Caterpillars were never meant to stay caterpillars; the process of metamorphosis ensures they have an opportunity to… achieve a higher state of life, so to say, from starting life as an egg to becoming a larva, to housing itself in its cocoon, and finally becoming the high-praised form of a fully-grown butterfly. _Caterpillars were never meant to remain caterpillars…_

-----

"Where were you yesterday?" Chiyako asked after a period – about half an hour – of silence, "I wanted to show you something."

Kaoru looked over at her, "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't come. Hikaru and I went with our mother to a fashion showing."

"Really?" she asked, almost as if she didn't believe him, "I still have it today. Can I show you today?"

"Sure," Kaoru turned in his seat to face her fully, "What do you have to show me?"

In answer, Chiyako reached into a skirt pocket and took something out gingerly, "Here, put out your hand."

Kaoru obeyed and she deposited a tiny, flaky-grey object in the center of his palm.

His first instinct was to blink. As was his second, "Umm… Is it a… bug?" he asked tentatively, almost willing it to be a grubby insect and not some manner of… animal excrement.

"_Onee-chan_ said it was a chrysalis," Chiyako explained, "It was found yesterday when you weren't here."

Oh. Better than something out the other end of some random creature. No problem.

"Why do you have it? It's probably dirty."

"Because," Chiyako replied in a typical "the-child-knows-all" answer, but then proceeded to elaborate, "The butterfly gets to fly wherever it wants, but the chrysalis gets left behind. I don't get why the butterfly doesn't take the chrysalis with it. I mean, since the chrysalis took care of it for so long and all, it seems a little…"

"Ungrateful?" he supplied quietly. It was possibly the most her had ever heard her say in one sitting. It was unnerving to hear such logic from this manner of innocence.

"Yea, that," she agreed, taking it from him, "So since the butterfly won't bring its chrysalis along with it when it goes out into the world, I'm going to keep it," she replaced it in her pocket again and looked up at him., "I bet someone else will too."

He blinked at her, not quite sure of her meaning, and she stared right back. Finally, a minute later (it seemed like an hour), she broke the silence with a startling question,

"Are you _Onee-chan's_ boyfriend?"

Kaoru was surprised, but forced a laugh, "Me? Nah. The one you're looking for is Hikaru."

"Really?" she said again, in the same mildly unbelieving tone that didn't quite match her youthful looks, "_Onee-chan_ is lucky."

Kaoru fought the eyebrow that was threatening to rise in confusion. Since when did kids get so cryptic? It couldn't be healthy.

"You know what?" he said finally, after a bit of thought, "I think so too." Though he didn't mean the same person.

-----

The next day, when he arrived with his brother and Haruhi, Chiyako wasn't there that day. Apparently, as they found out from one of the daycare workers, Chiyako had gone to the amusement park with her family, so for the first time, Kaoru was able to leave his perch on the bench and spend time frolicking with the other children in the sand, who had quickly established the "who's who" by spilling juice on him. "_Onii-chan_" was the one with a large, bright pink splotch on his white-no-longer shirt.

It wasn't until mini-Mori had to leave that he noticed the now conspicuous absences of one Hikaru Hitachiin and one Haruhi Fujioka. As parents began arriving to pick up their children, one by one they started up a protest that they wouldn't leave until they told their _Onee-chan_ and _Onii-san_ goodbye. In an attempt to mollify the parents who were beginning to tap their feet impatiently, he promised that he would find them.

He checked through all the classrooms, no dice. Waited outside an occupied bathroom, hoping one of them was in there, but that only turned up one surprised daycare volunteer and more glaring parents. In a last ditch effort, he trotted outside, wondering with the part of his mind that wasn't busily searching for Hikaru's bright red hair if the two of them hadn't fallen off of the face of the earth already.

Nearing the bench he had always sat at with Chiyako, he spied a tendril of dark hair disappearing behind the other side of the tree trunk and relieved, stepped around to inform them of their urgently desired presence in the lobby… and just as soon stopped.

He had never really placed much value upon the cliché "and the world just disappeared in a swirl of flashing colors", but that was what it seemed like for the two engrossed solely in each other as if their world consisted only of warmth and moving lips.

'Or only of each other,' he mused bitterly, turning away. Just the two of them, them and then maybe just the wind, small, enclosed, private.

A glimmer of color caught his attention and his eyes were drawn to a single butterfly, winging in a graceful arc overhead, easily through the leaves and branches. He looked up to follow its path… and exhaled slowly as his vision blurred around one tiny, insignificant chrysalis.

./OWARI;

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**A/N**: _Just a brief vignette of what I think would happen if things ever came to a head between them. As requested, I tried to stash a little hopefulness in there so it's not quite so angsty. Haha. Hooray for teenage wangst. Please butcher; I wanna know how I did._

-MshRm


End file.
